It was the weekend and I had some time to burn down a few hours with couple of movies I had on my bucket list, I just watched a very recent Indie action movie and it’s called Kill (2023) and I actually had a great time to be hones, in terms of a film that keeps you wanting more, not letting you catch your breath, this one is recommended. It is as if John Wick decided to board a train in India and everything went south really fast but with more chop chop and lot of blood, not a horror movie but a very gory action movie.
There is this army commando named Amrit, played by Lakshya who is in love with a girl named Tulika, your classic love story, but not really since Tulika’s family has other ideas, they want to arrange her marriage. Amrit doesn’t take no for an answer so he and his friend Viresh follow Tulika and her family onto a train with the intention of kidnapping her and making her his bride, this movie is not suttile in any of its fronts. But here is where the movie takes a turn for the worse, at least for the lovers, a group of bandits with the most notorious of them being Fani, chooses to rob the train, Fani imo set the bar high and makes your average movie villain look like a kitten.
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At first I was thinking “Great, another John Wick clone,” but that is where the movie begins to change things up. In the beginning both Amrit and Viresh are just trying to calm down the situation, you know, they are just being good soldiers. However at about 40 minutes into the movie Fani discover that the father of Tulika, the girl Amrit wants to marry, her father is the owner of the transportation company that operates the rail roads so things go from a simple robbery to full blow high profile kidnapping, it is one of those events where you are watching the movie and you can’t believe what just happened, you are like ‘did they really just do that?’ from all the violence that start to blow up, from that point on, it’s like the nitro has been hit on this action train and it doesn’t stop for the rest of the film.
I mean, the action sequences in this movie are just crazy, its mostly knife and machete fighting so it really goes down to the basic levels of killing and mutilation. The director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat is well aware of how to create chaos in limited locations, usually this type of movies where there are few characters and tight spaces require something to keep the audience awake if not it turns boring very quick. There are knife fights, fistfights and some unique ways of using household items that will change the way you look at fire extinguishers. It’s not the shaky camera work that makes it hard to understand what’s going on, they’ll tell you right to your face, it is raw, it is violent and it is utterly brutal.
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To give out an opinion about the cast I had to look it up since I really have no clue who are the actors, I'm not use to watch movies from India but this year its already my forth one. Lakshya as Amrit in his first film is impressive and has delivered his best. The guy is solid in the action department but he also gives the character a lot of heart, which makes you want the guy to succeed. It is an inspiring and painful journey that you can feel his anger, his pain and his determination. Tanya Maniktala as Tulika, she isn’t on screen as much but when she is, you really believe in their love. I think it’s a Bollywood thing only, they always have a way of making you believe in love at first sight.
But the most impressive was Raghav Juyal as Fani, this man is scary and had that crazy look. He portrays Fani as a man who is a walking bundle of confusion and one expects him to explode at any given time, a very volatile character that can be ok for five minutes acting natural and the next he is doing something so vile that you are compelled to look but you don’t want to., it’s the sort of performance that stays in your memory even once the movie is over, I have been wanting someone to come close to Ledger Joker, I'm not trying to say its a fare comparison but its similar in a way.
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While I was looking up for information about the actors I couldn't avoid reading the reviews on this movie and it did made quite the buzz all along in film festivals and critics praise it as one of the best action movies in India, I really like Monkey Man recently and this two are very close although Kill is a harder movie to make it work due to the tight space. It might be quite bloody for some people, perhaps? This is not your classic love type Bollywood movie with lots of musical numbers and dancing.
Now, about that ending, without spoiling it too much, it doesn’t give you a happy ending, it’s not clean, it’s not logical, and it raises more issues than it answers. Is Amrit a hero or has he transformed into something else while trying to protect others on the train, sometimes even the bandits tell him he doesn't have to be that violent, imagine that. This is something that the movie doesn’t tell you outright and I enjoyed that, we have the chance to watch a character transform through violence, it is a different ending over all and leaves the audience to make their own mind up as to what is happening. There is this one scene towards the climax where Fani tells Amrit how he is no better than him, and it’s kind of hard not to agree with Fani there. It made me think about the nature of revenge, about how far is too far when you're fighting for what you believe in, heavy stuff for a movie that also features a dude getting his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher.
In my opinion, I think this one is 7 out of 10, the movie does has flaws, there are some parts in the movie that looks a bit too dramatic, some others over exaggerated and some scenes that seems to drag a little too long, but once it gets going, it is a roller coaster that never stops. The action is great, the cast is superb and it’s great to see an Indian movie that does not shy away from the R rated action. What I found most interesting was the portrayal of the villains in the movie, the main event you have Fani and he’s a villain, through and through, but then you have the rest of his gang, and they are still villains, but they are not as one dimensional as Fani. At some point you will see them grieving over their dead friends, wondering if they have crossed the line. It brings in this element of depth that you don’t get to see in most action movies for instance. It’s like, yes, Amrit is just slicing these guys like paper, but there is this feeling of pity for some of them too? It’s strange, but in a positive sense.
